Labouring on Europe The Labour Party's division on Europe takes
several forms. At its simplest, the dispute is between those who think that Britain should join the Common Market at almost any cost and who therefore place themselves on this issue with Mr Heath and the majority of Conservative members of Parliament, and those who are opposed to the entire project of acceding to the Treaty of Rome. The outright opponents of the Treaty undoubtedly form a great majority within the Labour Party as a whole, and almost certainly in the country at large also. It might therefore seem obvious that the Labour Party should recognise this state of affairs and follow the Trades Union Congress in declaring its opposition 'in principle' to joining the Common Market. The difficulty is that the overwhelming predominance of anti-Market opinion in the Party as a whole is not reflected accurately in the membership of the Party's ruling institutions. The Parliamentary Labour Party, the National Executive Committee, and the Shadow Cabinet are all far less clear in their several collective minds than is the Labour movement that entry into Europe should be resisted utterly. In part this is because the Party leaders know that the application to join Europe, which Mr Heath has pursued with such remarkable vigour and relentlessness, was an application made by Mr Wilson; and although a majority of Labour leaders are prepared to agree that the final terms secured by Mr Heath are unacceptable to them, there are others who declare that a Labour Cabinet would have accepted the terms now negotiated. Mr Jenkins voted against the Government on the Third Reading of the European Communities Bill, but, despite this curious apostasy, the plain fact of the matter is that the Jenkinsites, in their zealous enthusiasm for the European policy, have enabled the Bill to pass through the House of Commons and have thereby been responsible for keeping Mr Heath and his administration in office, This might have resulted in the Jenkinsites being driven out of the Labour Party; but many men of power and influence in the Party's upper reaches, although not prepared to support a Tory measure and prepared to declare that the negotiated terms are not good enough, nevertheless have wanted to keep the Jenkinsites in the party and the party with a foot in the European door. Essentially, the crisis within the Labour Party over Europe is a crisis within, and to do with, the Parliamentary Labour Party; and it is this which makes what would otherwise be a simple, and readily resolved, dispute into a complex, confused and knotted business, not susceptible to comfortable and clean resolution.
Mr Hugh Scanlon and his Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers will attempt to cut the Gordian knot at Blackpool. The Construction Workers' section of the union will move a motion declaring "outright opposition" to European entry in an effort to end the debate and the split once and for all, even if it means the shedding of blood. Mr Michael Foot's Ebbw Vale Constituency Labour Party has a not much less intransigent motion: "The Conference rejects the terms for British entry to the Common Market and calls for a future Labour Govern ment to reverse any decision for Britain to join the Common Market unless new terms consistent with British interests have been negotiated and the assent of the British electorate has been given." This, like the similar formula adopted by the National Executive Committee, is designed to lean as far as possible in the direction of opposition without incurring a commitment against in principle,' the political objects being to enable the Jenkinsites to remain within the party and to give a future Labour government some room for manoeuvre should Britain already be entangled with Europe when it succeeded to power. The platform at the Blackpool conference will not wish to suffer a defeat on Europe; and the leaders will calculate that, if the National Executive formula contained in its Green Paper is unlikely to command majority support, then it will be best for it not to be put to the vote. The Ebbw Vale resolution might then, for all its intransigence, be given the blessing of the platform, in an effort to stave off the AUEW's outright opposition and any attempts by the anti-market ultras to prevent the Labour Party in opposition and in power from contributing representatives to the European Parliament and members to the European Commission. Mr Wilson may well then plead, "Do not tie the hands of a future Labour government;" Mr Foot may, well then plead, "Do not drive the marketeers out" Mr Crosland may well then plead, "Let us put the unity of the party before everything." But it will be Mr Benn in the chair, and he, if the clamant demand from the conference is that outright opposition in principle become the policy of the Labour party, may very well respond to that clamour.
The Norwegian decision against the Market cannot but reinforce the ultras. It is right that, in reaching its decision on Europe, the Labour Party, while conscious of its great national obligation as Her Majesty's Opposition and as the alternative government, should consider its partisan interest as well as the national interest. Many will think the two are linked: for at a time of national crisis, it is in the nation's interest that the Opposition and alternative government should be strong, not weak, united and not divided in its councils and policies, and fit, instantaneously if necessary, to fight and win an election and thereafter to assume office. Many will also conclude, having considered the extraordinary failure of the two-party system to express the nation's will or even to reflect its mood in the Parliamentary consideration of the European Communities Bill, that it is time for the Labour Party to reach a clear and clean decision on Europe. The Labour Party's choice is simple, despite its political complexity. The delegates at Blackpool can once again fudge the issue, and if they do, the effect will be, once again, to assist the will of the Prime Minister. Alternatively the delegates can steel themselves to support the engineers and thus, in effect, to express the will of the Party and reflect and endorse the mood of the country.
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